In June, the Youth 20 Summit took place in Berlin, hosted by the 2017 German G20Presidency. As one of the official G20 engagement groups, the Y20 saw a total of 31 countriesrepresented by 73 delegates who brought together the views of youth from all around theworld. Over the course of nine days of meetings the delegates negotiated a range of topics –from digitalization and climate change, to terrorism and global trade. The end result was a 30-page Communiqué that spanned eleven complex policy areas of relevance for presidents, primeministers, and policy makers everywhere. With youth as the central focus of the Summit, thepolicy recommendations presented to Chancellor Angela Merkel on the penultimate day tookon a distinct dimension characterized by shared progressive values, a sense of urgency, and aforward-looking approach to empower the largest youth population that the world has everseen.

The same could not be said, however, for the Leaders’ Declaration document that wasreleased in July after the G20 Summit in Hamburg. Within the final Communiqué, young peopleare referenced only five times in total. In every case these references position the world’s youthas clients in need of educational and work opportunities rather than as critical partners insolving the world’s challenges. While it is true that young people face an increasingly dauntingskills gap as our economies move toward greater automation and technological sophisticationand that unemployment and precarious work conditions disproportionately impact youth, thisperspective on people between the ages of 14-30 that places youth as mere beneficiaries ofpolicy is inherently problematic.

World leaders often like to refer to students and young professionals as the “leaders oftomorrow.” This is both an unproductive and categorically dishonest way to position theyoungest people of the world. At best, it signals that we have significant responsibility to lookto in the future, but not quite in the present. At worst, it legitimizes the push to the peripherythat we often experience in international and domestic politics that results in being told “notyet.”

The 2017 German Presidency took meaningful action to better include the youngerperspective by hosting and funding delegate participation during a very successful Youth 20Summit. By investing resources and incorporating high-level government officials in the Summitprogramming, an important precedent was set for future G20 Presidencies, especially forArgentina as they assume the role of host for the 2018 Summit. Further, Chancellor Merkel’s90-minute meeting with the entire group of delegates to have a dialogue on the policyrecommendations sent a strong message for the future of the Y20 Summit – that when we lookbeyond tokenistic engagement, world leaders and youth can have productive and substantiveconversations about the future of international policy that affects us all.

This was a huge step that bolstered the legitimacy of the youth agenda and advocacyeffort on topics like women’s empowerment, displacement and refugees, as well as the 2030Agenda for Sustainable Development. As a result of the Y20 Summit, delegates have heldfollow-up activities with their G20 Sherpas, heads of government, UN agencies, the media, andyouth organizations.

Where the German Presidency failed to include youth specifically, though, was withinthe most high-level segments of the G20 Summit. In the months leading up to Hamburg, anumber of official engagement groups met to coordinate policy recommendations and presenttheir Communiqués to influence G20 negotiations. Some of these official groups, along with theY20, include the Women 20 (W20), Business 20 (B20), Think Tank 20 (T20), and Civil 20 (C20).

The W20 meetings were highly publicized around the world and were attended by highprofile guests including Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, InternationalMonetary Fund Chief Christine Lagarde, and Ivanka Trump. Throughout the Leaders’ Summit,the pinnacle of the G20 process, engagement groups received accreditation to disseminate

their policy recommendations to the media, country delegations, as well as other stakeholderslike the WHO, UN, or OECD. The B20 and C20 held a joint press conference during the Summitand had representatives present to act as advocates of their respective meeting outcomes. Thissustained lobbying effort by stakeholders is hugely influential in the negotiation process andultimate outcome document of the Summit.

Notably absent from the entirety of the Hamburg Summit were the youth of the Y20.Perhaps it is because of this lack of presence that the Leaders’ Declaration only mentions youthfive times, regarding them as clients rather than partners. Young people are committed tobeing more than passive actors because the policies that are being written by currentleadership will determine the kind of world that we will live in for many years to come. For thisreason, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement werearticulated as absolute and pressing priorities by the youth of the G20, though leaders onlybriefly addressed these frameworks and the Sustainable Development Goals in theirCommuniqué. It is disappointing that young people did not have an opportunity to raise astrong, unified voice about the future we want for ourselves at one of the most importantmultilateral meetings of the year.

If the leaders of the G20 really hope to achieve the targets of our ambitiousinternational and domestic agreements there must be a fundamental shift in understanding ofthe role that young people have to play. We are not the leaders of tomorrow. We are theengaged leaders of the present who are active in entrepreneurship, academia, humanitarianaffairs, peace building, innovation, politics, civil society, healthcare, education, and so muchmore. Young leadership is dynamic and adaptive, and brings skills and competencies that othergenerations of leaders do not possess. This is a critical time to take action on fighting climatechange, ensuring the global economy works for everyone, and to address the root causes ofinsecurity. We need to begin drawing upon the diverse expertise of young people while trulyincluding them in discussion as well as implementation to ensure that the ambitious agendasbeing set are sustained beyond the current political cycle.

The issues that the world collectively faces demands collaboration across ages, partisanlines, and borders. Governments at all levels must leverage its youth beyond tokenisticplatitudes if they hope to realize a more sustainable, equitable, and peaceful world for allpeople, everywhere.

In short, youth need to be taken seriously as critical actors that are central to achievinginternational progress – because the future of the world depends on us today.